Service Dress Blues (16 page)

Chapter 21

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

“All right, let's get on with it,” Stan Keegan, the Sylvanus County District Attorney said.

Eight people had taken up positions in a rough semi-circle in the club room at the Lindstrom home. Keegan and one of his assistants stood next to a court reporter, who sat on a folding chair next to her machine, prepared to transcribe the proceedings. Behind her and to her left stood a youngish, bearded man behind a digital movie camera mounted on a large, sturdy tripod. He was wearing earphones and gazing at the camera's viewfinder, as if he were getting ready to direct Gloria Swanson's close-up in
Sunset Boulevard
. To his left stood Rep, Lena, Kuchinski, and Sarah Flanagan, the woman who had overseen the efforts to clean up the Lindstrom home after the fire.

“Do you want me to swear the witness?” the court reporter asked.

“No,” Kuchinski said. “This is a demonstration, not testimony.”

“Whatever it is,” Keegan said, “let's get it done. It's taken us over three weeks to get this arranged, and I'd like to get it over with before another three weeks have gone by. Believe it or not, this isn't my only case.”

“Ms. Flanagan,” Kuchinski said, “nod at the camera so we'll all be able to remember which one you were when we look at the tape.”

The woman complied a bit diffidently, as if she weren't entirely sure she should be there.

“Did you take part in cleaning up the mess in here after the fire a while back?”

“Yes. Two friends and I. We spent the better part of two days doing what we could.”

“Did you find the bookshelf down in that cabinet over there?” Kuchinski helpfully pointed at the cabinet, and the camera lens obediently swung in that direction.

“Yes.”

“What did you do about that?”

“We put the brackets back in place and replaced the shelf.”

“Did you buy new brackets, or use the old ones?”

“We used the ones that we found on the floor of the cabinet. They weren't broken. They had just fallen out.”

“All right, Reppert. It's your theory. You're on.”

Keegan opened his mouth to demand that Rep identify himself for the record, but Rep anticipated him, stating his name and address as he walked toward the cabinet. The heaviest key he'd been able to find was the one for his bike-lock. He took it out of his pocket and glanced over his shoulder, to be sure the camera could follow what he was doing. The camera operator nodded slowly. Kuchinski ostentatiously pulled a digital running timer from his coat pocket.

Rep gently pulled open the drawer above the cabinet doors. He pulled it out about four inches. He dropped the key into the drawer and pushed it brusquely shut. Kuchinski pushed the
START
button on the timer.

Nothing happened for five seconds. Then nothing happened for three more seconds. Keegan scowled. Rep began to sweat. Kuchinski kept a poker face. Lena and Flanagan looked puzzled.

Then a dull
CRASH-THUNK!
sounded from inside the cabinet. Rep pulled the cabinet doors open. One end of the bookshelf had fallen.

“Eight seconds,” Kuchinski said, holding the timer up so that the camera could record its face, and then passing it on to the court reporter.

“What's that supposed to prove?” Keegan demanded.

“If those footsteps in the hallway are any clue, I think we're about three seconds from finding out,” Kuchinski said.

Two seconds later, a uniformed cop who had been guarding the front door stuck his head into the club room.

“What was that noise?” he asked.

“Did you get that, madam reporter?” Kuchinski asked. “‘What was that noise?' Let the record show that this question came from a trained law enforcement officer who was standing at or near the front door of the house at the time of the noise in question.”

“All right,” Keegan said. “Off the record.”

“Off the record,” Kuchinski agreed.

“So connect the dots for me.”

Kuchinski nodded at Rep.

“There have always been two puzzles about the night Ole was hit,” Rep said. “The first was why nothing was taken if there was an intruder in the house. The second was how the intruder got out without anyone seeing him and without leaving any footprints in the snow in back of the house.”

“I'd say those are both still puzzles,” Keegan said.

“Suppose the intruder wasn't here to take something. Suppose he was here to put some things back.”

“Like what?” Keegan asked.

“Like a laptop computer and the key to a safe deposit box at the Mercantile Bank. Ole and Harald each had a key, and you needed both keys to open the box. We know that whoever mugged Harald took his key, and we know that someone accessed the safe deposit box the next day. Therefore, whoever it was must have had Ole's key as well. But he—or she—had to get that key back before Ole missed it. Therefore she—or he—came back to the Lindstrom home on Saturday night to return the key.”

“Just call the intruder ‘he' from now on and have all the feminists send their emails to me,” Kuchinski growled. “We'll posit that it covers both sexes, like it did in the old days.”

“Fair enough. The intruder is interrupted first by Ole's return. The intruder hasn't gotten back to the club room yet. He's in the kitchen or the dining room, and when he hears Ole coming in he hides as best he can. It's dark, and Ole is in no condition to spot him as he storms through to the living room. The intruder stays out of sight until he gets a clear shot at Ole from behind and then brains him with the frying pan.”

“I'm keeping up so far,” Keegan said when Rep paused for breath, “but it seems to me like you're a long way from home.”

“With Ole unconscious, the intruder goes back to the club room. He's feeling his way carefully, because he's not sure how long Ole will be out. At the same time, he's scared stiff because he thinks he might have killed Ole instead of just knocking him out. Then he hears Lena's car pulling into the driveway. He hears the door slam. He knows he's running out of time. He drops the key back into the drawer and hurries out the front door just as Lena is coming in the back. The shelf falls just as he reaches the front porch and Lena reaches the kitchen. He skedaddles over the walkway and driveway, where no one is going to notice one or two more footprints.”

“Why didn't Carlsen spot the intruder when he drove up?” Keegan demanded. “Carlsen drove up just in time to hear Lena scream. That's why he called nine-one-one. If your theory is right, the scream couldn't have been more than four or five seconds after the intruder was out the front door.”

“He had a winter landscape on a dark December night to hide in when he saw Carlsen's headlights approaching,” Rep said. “Once Carlsen heard Lena's scream, he hurried into the house. He had no reason to believe he should be looking for fugitives on the way.”

Silence hung heavily in the room for fifteen to twenty seconds.

“Back on the record?” the court reporter asked then.

“No.” Keegan said.

“So, Stan,” Kuchinski said. “Whattaya think?”

“You know what I think?” Keegan said. “I think Ole Lindstrom was murdered in Milwaukee County, that's what I think. They're all college boys down there. Let them worry about this mess.”

He walked out with his assistant and the cop trailing behind him.

“Will you be wanting a transcript?” the reporter asked.

“Yep. Just in case.”

“This was good news, I guess,” Lena said.

“It's as good as news can get at this stage,” Kuchinski said, “which ain't saying much, but I guess we'll take what we can get.”

Chapter 22

“So Lena's off the hook?” Melissa asked Rep that evening.

“Only in Sylvanus County. Milwaukee County officially has Ole's murder now, and they're nowhere close to clearing her.”

“I don't think she murdered him in either county.” Melissa poured two glasses of chilled Chardonnay and gave one of them to her husband.

“Neither do I, but I'll bet that's a minority view down at the Safety Building,” Rep said. “Statistically, she's the most likely suspect. And the way they look at it, if she didn't do it, who did?”

“I'm coming up empty on that one, I'm afraid.”

“So am I. But whatever the answer is, but I'd say there's a fifty-fifty chance that part of it is located in Annapolis, Maryland.”

“I think you're right,” Melissa said after a moment's thoughtful contemplation of her wine. “This mess didn't start with the arson in Loki or with Ole Lindstrom's murder or with the burglary of the Lindstrom home last December. It started with Harald Lindstrom being drugged and mugged near Annapolis. This isn't a series of isolated felonies. It's a mini-crime wave focused on the Lindstrom family—and half of that family is Annapolis.”

“Which unfortunately will be of only marginal interest to the police—thanks in part to me.”

“Because you fingered Laurel Wolf for the arson, based on the sound of her voice through a ski mask.”

“Right. As far as the cops are concerned, that makes her the most convenient suspect for Ole's murder after Lena, with Veronica Gephardt a distant third. Until they find Laurel and work her over, they're not going to be thinking about tracking down a connection to some plebe getting caught with his pants down on the East Coast.”

“Three suspects in a brutal murder, and all of them are women,” Melissa mused. “It seems a little—”

“Sexist?”

“For now let's just say a little curious. It's not that women can't be criminals. We seem to commit a disproportionate number of embezzlements, for example. It's not even that women can't be murderers, at least with firearms.”

“‘God created man, and Colonel Colt made him equal,' as they used to say in the Old West.”

“But when you're talking about crimes committed with tomahawks and blunt objects instead of shotguns or computers and checkbooks, you'd expect the male sex to be less feebly represented. It's a bit like field hockey versus ice hockey.”

“Speaking of sexist, I think you're skating pretty close to the line with that simile,” Rep said. “Anyway, you've convinced me. The under-investigated connection is Harald Lindstrom in Annapolis. So what do we do about that?”

Melissa took a quick sip of wine and looked levelly over the rim of the glass at Rep.

“Why should we do anything about it? Aside from the facts that nobody else will and Ole was your client and Walt's our friend and you feel shaky about identifying Laurel Wolf?”

“I think that pretty much covers the list of reasons. What do you think we should do?”

“I think we should finish our wine and have something vaguely nutritious for dinner,” Melissa said. “Then I think we should flip a coin to decide whether we put Brubeck or Bach on the Bose. Once the music starts playing, I think we should wait for Frank's call. I left him a voice-mail asking him to give us a ring tonight.”

“You rascal. Showing initiative and a gift for alliteration in the same evening.”

“Next I'll have you eating salad without complaining about it.”

“As long it's not the entrée.”

“It is. Consider yourself lucky that it isn't dessert.”

***

They were listening to
Blue Rondo à la Turk
about forty-five minutes later when Frank called. Melissa had won the toss, but out of sheer perversity she'd chosen Brubeck, just to contradict gender stereotypes.

“You're right about the attaché case,” Frank said after they'd described the video they'd watched. “I've never seen an officer in uniform carry anything in his right hand. It gets to be pure reflex.”

“So maybe one of us should try to get our hands on a first-hand account of Midshipman Lindstrom's adventure,” Rep said.

“Good luck with that,” Frank said.

“What are the chances of getting a look at the Academy's investigative file?” Melissa asked.

“Zero.”

“How about if we could somehow gin up a special request from a judge with a fancy title on it like ‘Letters Rogatory,' stamped with an embossed seal and decorated with a couple of ribbons?” Rep asked.

“Unless the judge is the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, you won't get past the marine at the Bilge Gate with it. Military investigative reports are so secret they make grand jury testimony look like the lead story in the
National Inquirer
.”

“Then maybe one of us should just talk to him face to face,” Melissa said. “Then we can write our own investigative report.”

“Even that might be a pretty good trick. He won't be leaving the yard for the rest of his plebe year.”

“Why?” Melissa asked. “Hasn't he been pretty much cleared? We've corroborated his story, even if we haven't accomplished much else.”

“He's been cleared of lying about voluntarily taking drugs and recklessly provoking a huge security snafu. So he won't be expelled. But one of the things he didn't lie about was drinking alcohol. He was up front about that. That's a conduct violation.”

“Okay,” Melissa said. “You're the expert Frank. Is there some way we could talk to him on the yard, but in private?”

“Tall order. I have one idea. It's a long shot, but I'll see what I can do. It won't happen overnight, but I might be able to get something set up for three weeks or a month from now.”

“Thanks, bro.”

“Don't thank me until you hear the idea—and until I've brought it off.”

***

“April Tenth, in the evening,” Frank said when he got back to them four days later.

“Oops,” Melissa said as she scrolled deftly through her PDA.

“Why ‘oops?'”

“I have a conflict. I'm supposed to be at the Milwaukee Brewers baseball game that evening.”

“A
baseball game
?”

“It's a long story.”

“Can't you get someone else, or just back out of it?”

“Nope. I gave my word.”

“That's okay,” Rep said, jumping in when Frank and Melissa paused simultaneously for breath. “I can go.”

“That's sweet,” Melissa said. “You're being heroic.”

“No,” Rep said, “answering baseball trivia questions in front of forty-thousand people is heroic. I'm just being practical.”